


Foreign Bodies

by coraxes



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, F/M, Pre-Canon, Time Travel Fix-It, death of the outsider spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-28
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2019-11-06 18:49:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17945144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coraxes/pseuds/coraxes
Summary: In 1852, Billie kills the Outsider.In 1836, Billie tries to stop everything from going to shit--starting with the assassination of Jessamine Kaldwin.





	1. Nostalgia

Billie woke up screaming, her right eye burning and her left arm numb to the elbow. That wasn’t unusual. The Outsider’s modifications had given her a brief respite from those nightmares, but she had had the dreams for months before that, ever since Emily came back from Aramis’s mansion.

No, the unusual part was waking to see a concerned coworker standing over her bunk.

Billie jerked away from Thomas, hand flexing as if she could still summon the twin-bladed knife. Useless. She had left it buried in the Outsider’s chest sixteen years in the future; who knew where it was now? “Back,” she rasped. She glared from Thomas to the few other whalers watching among the crumbling rafters and bookcases. Billie was the lieutenant of the whalers now, she reminded herself, not their traitor, and tried to summon her old arrogance again. “I’m not going to tuck you in, kids. Get back to bed.”

Most slipped away, back to their bunks or watch or just to spy from a safer distance. Thomas remained, of course. She hadn’t been surprised to hear he’d taken over; Thomas never jockeyed for power, but he took responsibility for everyone whether they wanted him to or not. “Alright, Billie?” he asked quietly.

“I can handle a bad dream,” Billie said. She tried to lean back and remembered just in time not to trust her left arm. Plenty of whalers had nightmares, but their physical aftereffects would be more difficult to explain away. “Go back to bed, Thomas. I need you checking out Timsch’s place in a few hours.”

There was a cheery thought. This trip was strictly reconnaissance, preparation in case anyone ever contracted their services. But Billie remembered watching the pathetic old man faint in front of his mansion. She had laughed behind her mask, biting down on her lip to keep the noise down, only to startle at Daud’s gravelly chuckle. It had hit her then what she had given up by betraying him.

Thomas nodded. His eyes focused on something on the ledge above and behind Billie’s bunk; her stomach sank, knowing who it was. Then he dissolved into a transversal.

“Lurk, my office,” Daud called down from the ledge—really just a collection of rotting boards where the library floor sunk into the nest Billie had picked out for herself.

“Yeah, Boss.” She pulled a face and transversed up to him. Daud was already walking down the hallway when she rematerialized, expecting her to follow.

Well, she would, wouldn’t she?

Daud was the strangest part of returning to this time. When she had gone looking for Daud after Emily ended the coup, this had been the man she expected to find. But he wasn’t the man she remembered. Perhaps Billie had changed too much for them; Daud was younger than she felt herself to be. Calling him “boss” felt odd now after the unexpected, touchy camaraderie they’d shared on the Wale. (After she’d read his words, _I’m proud of you_ , listened to his last recording over and over.)

She couldn’t stop looking at him. At least a little staring wasn’t out of character.

“Shut the door,” he said once they crossed the threshold.

Billie rolled her working eye and turned to do so. Then a projectile thwacked against her temple. Billie whirled, eyes watering, and reached for her whaling blade.

But all she saw was Daud glaring at her and his shittiest inkpen lying on the carpet near her feet. “Since when have you had a blind spot, Billie? What’s going on?”

“You could have just asked.” As if she would have told him.

Billie rubbed her stinging temple and, not for the first time, considered telling the truth. Daud would probably believe her; he wouldn’t put anything past the Outsider. _Five days ago and fifteen years in the future, I murdered a god because you told me to and wished I could go back and change things. The Void obliged, and then some._ But telling the truth would mean needing to prove it. Telling the truth might mean explaining that, a few months from now, the original Billie would stab him in the back. It might mean needing to decide just what she was doing back here. Her vague ideas were one thing, but…

Daud didn’t comment on her grumbling. He reached for her face, nudging against Billie’s chin so he could look more closely at the bad eye. Billie’s good hand twitched toward him and she curled it into a fist.

“I’ve been having dreams where we kill the empress.” The lie rolled easily from her tongue, and Daud stilled. Feeling prickled up Billie’s fingers; she forced them to flex, pulling a face when it just made the pins-and-needles radiate up her arm. “It doesn’t go well. I’ll be back to normal in a few minutes.”

Billie had never known when exactly Daud had gotten the offer from Burrows, but if her hunch was right…“How long have they been happening?”

“First one was five days ago.” Daud’s frown deepened; satisfaction curled in Billie’s chest. He wasn’t nearly as easy to read as he was on the Wale, but she still remembered his cues. She couldn’t help but gloat a little. “You got an offer then, didn’t you?”

He nodded. “Is it just your eye? What happened?”

“My eye and arm. The Empress ends up dead, but so do you and most of the others. Burrows, Campbell, most of the rest get executed.” Or close enough. Billie was never quite sure what happened to the leaders of the coup besides Burrows. News out of Gristol had been slow and convoluted during the plague years. Only Burrows’s execution had been publicly announced. Sokolov always claimed little Emily had offered to pull the lever herself.

“Campbell? Let me see the arm.” He raised an eyebrow when she had to maneuver one hand up with another, and steadied the limb with his hands at her wrist and elbow. Daud’s eyes flickered black, checking for magic.

Billie fought back a shiver. “He and Burrows are working together, along with the Pendletons.” Or was it just the twins? Two had gone missing, one dead—she couldn’t remember which. “And one of the Ladies Boyle.”

Daud’s eyes narrowed. Billie’s vision was coming back, but slowly, throwing everything into annoyingly uneven perspective. “And you’re only telling me this now.”

Billie snorted. “They’re nightmares, Daud. I figured it was some weird Void bullshit.”

Daud let go of Billie’s arm, slowly enough that she was able to support it herself, and crossed the room to his desk. Billie let out a shaky breath and followed. “I told Burrows I’d consider it,” Daud said. “He expects my answer in two days.”

“What are you going to say?” He pulled out the contract. It was unsigned, of course, the only name on it _Jessamine Kaldwin_ in Daud’s chicken scratch. When she saw the promised sum over his shoulder her eyebrows twitched up. Billie had put away a lot of coin back in the day—most of it gone by the time she’d had to leave Dunwall, unfortunately.

Maybe she should start saving. Billie didn’t fancy working at the docks for years if things went wrong this time around. It paid considerably less than assassinations.

Daud shrugged. “If you’re seeing this future, we might be able to work around it. Figure out what goes wrong.” His shoulders were tense and his words too careful—suggesting, not ordering.

Billie had always assumed that Daud’s regret at killing the empress only appeared in the chaos that followed. He had been cautious as they planned the attack, stalling until the Lord Protector himself had managed to beat them back to the tower, but Billie had thought little of it at the time. Daud had always liked to plan more than Billie thought was necessary.

But younger Billie hadn’t seen a Daud who actually doubted himself or recognized it for what it was until after Jessamine was dead. Now she did. “Or we just don’t take the job.”

“It’s a lot of money. And her bodyguard’s about to be out of the way. Word is he’s going on a trip around the isles in the next few weeks.” Right—they were nearly in Clans.

She rubbed at the cluster of nerves on the inside of her left elbow, partly because it helped bring the feeling back, partly to remind herself it was still there. Billie had missed having all her limbs, even the occasional freakish Void one. “Maybe the nightmares are a warning. If the Outsider’s trying to tell us something…” Billie shrugged; she didn’t really know how well that would go over. Up until Daud asked her to kill the Outsider she’d assumed he listened to the kid. “Besides, there’s no way Burrows would keep us around even if the coup was a success. We might be useful at first, but eventually we’d be a loose end.”

Magic powers or no, the Whalers weren’t an army. If the whole might of the Watch or the Abbey were after them, they’d have to either scatter or die. Daud had drilled that into her head years ago. Then he’d tasked her with planning escape routes for all their hideouts. Billie had grumbled and done it because it was the first time being his lieutenant actually changed something.

“Maybe.” His hands tightened on the edge of the desk. Billie sat next to the contract, angling back to get a better look at his expression. When he met her eyes it was somewhere between resigned and warm.

“Maybe?”

“I’ll think about it.”

Billie rolled her eyes—both of them, this time. It was as much as she’d get out of him now, though. Daud rarely turned down jobs as long as the money was good; it probably stung his pride to pass on this one. It would have bothered her too if she didn’t already know they could do it.

“You’ll tell me if anything else strange starts to happen,” Daud said.

Over his shoulder a portrait of Jessamine Kaldwin flickered against the wall, deep gray X slashed across its black and white canvas. “Of course,” Billie said, and held up a bone charm she’d snagged left-handed from his belt. “See? Good as ever.”

Daud rolled his eyes, grabbed the charm back, and nudged at her knee. “Out of my office, Lurk. Go back to bed.”

Billie almost gave him a line—it was such a perfect setup—but that had always been a bad idea. “You too,” she ordered instead, and grabbed a whiskey bottle from his stash on her way out. Maybe tomorrow she’d have the apothecary mix up something stronger. Billie doubted something as simple as saving the empress would end her nightmares.

* * *

The whiskey wasn’t enough to stop the nightmares, either, but Billie woke up before she could start screaming again.

* * *

In her grumpier moments, Billie thought Daud just appointed her lieutenant so that he wouldn’t have to deal with the Whalers as much. This was unfair to them both. Billie was a damn good second, the best they had at recon, with a knack for getting out of tricky situations as often as she got into them. And Daud was better with people than he seemed—brusque, no-nonsense, but he took his people seriously in a way that street kids often weren’t used to. Everyone was a little afraid of him, but they knew where they stood, which was more than could be said for a lot of other gang bosses.

Still, while Daud brooded over the contract, management of the whalers fell to Billie. Frankly, it was exhausting. She didn’t know why she’d ever thought leading the crew herself was a good idea.

(Billie did know. She’d wanted to prove she could rule the same people who feared her. The reality of day-to-day life as leader of the whalers hadn’t intruded on her fantasies. There was a reason Billie had spent the last fifteen years of her life surrounded by grumpy or sad old men.)

But she managed. Thomas handled most of the interpersonal issues, anyway. Billie spent the day following up on potential contracts, making sure their supply caches were still stocked, and sending out people out on jobs or to collect payments. Some of her knowledge of the future was helpful; she passed on a job that would land Rapha and Other Thomas on the Hatters’ shit list. Mostly, though, it was just work.

She’d missed her powers; she’d missed the whalers’ acceptance, though grudging in some cases, and being treated like the expert she was. But the actual work of it wasn’t the excitement she remembered.

Billie rolled her eyes at herself as she read Thomas’s briefing on the Timsch estate, her feet kicked up on a damp desk. She’d never been sentimental, but nostalgia had colored her memories of the whalers more than she’d realized. They hadn’t been family, barely been friends, not like Sokolov and Aramis—even Hypatia, in the few weeks they’d spent in close company. (Billie’d thought there might be something there, but then she picked up another lead on Daud and. Well.)

How had she thought that these were the only people who could accept her? How had Dunwall ever seemed like the entire world?

“Hey, uh, Miss—uh, Billie—Lurk?”

Billie quirked an eyebrow and looked over at Quinn, who’d poked her head through doorway. Quinn wasn’t a bad assassin—not the sneakiest, but she’d spent years in Bottle Street and was more used to hand-to-hand than much of the crew. She’d also managed to get spectacularly bad information on her first recon outing. Billie had gotten a fun new burn scar on her back out of the deal. Weeks after the resulting tongue-lashing, Quinn was still nervous around her. “What?”

“I’ve got a lead on a job.”

Wait—she remembered this. Quinn had come up with one of the last normal jobs Billie took before Daud pulled her into planning the empress’s assassination. Billie put down the Timsch report; most of it would be outdated by the time Daud took him out, anyway. “Give me the details,” she ordered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you're one of the 3 people who read billie/daud fic you might remember this concept from my last fic! i said i wasn't gonna expand but here i am.
> 
> anyway it's all plotted and i've got the next chapter written already. goal is to update every two weeks. comments and kudos are, as always, fantastic. it's my birthday so like...you gotta.


	2. Dissonance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw for allusions to child death via plague. (and like, assassins, but nothing too gory.)

Myrtle Roche had taken her family’s fortune, married a penniless aristocrat, and spent the next decades attempting to build her very own monopoly. Unfortunately for her and fortunately for the Whalers’ coffers, she’d overreached.

Billie took her time getting to Roche’s home on the outskirts of the Legal District, relearning paths over the city’s rooftops, breathing in the distinct scent of plague rot, fish, sea air, and factory smoke. Even through the filter of her mask it was a pungent mix. Plenty of cities stank, but none stank quite like Dunwall in the plague years.

She passed a weeper on her way out of the Flooded District and sat, for a moment, watching his progress. Billie knew how to cure him, she realized. Not the formula for the cure—she’d learned to be handy on the Wale, but chemistry had never been her forte. (Anton’s rambling lectures hurt more than helped.) But she knew who could make it.

If Joplin and Anton met months earlier, how many more lives might their cure save?

But she didn’t know either of them yet. Certainly not well enough to overcome a decades-long feud. Frankly, she didn’t want to know this time’s Anton. He was her friend, but only because she’d recognized how much he regretted pretty much everything he’d done before and during the plague. If she met him now—if he came onto her the way he’d done with Delilah—Billie didn’t know if she’d ever be able to think of him as her friend and not just another lecher.

Billie adjusted her mask and transversed past the weeper, deeper into the city.

The Roche estate was one of a handful on the edges of the district, not quite opulent enough to belong to the real wealth in Dunwall but still better than any place Billie could hope to live. Two Watch members staffed a station down the road. Billie kept an eye on their patrols as she scouted out the nearby buildings, staying out of the line of sight of nearby windows.

Finally, when she was satisfied with a few routes that would avoid prying eyes, she slipped through a second-story window.

She no longer had magic vision—that particular gift of Daud’s had never passed to her, and of course her Foresight was gone with her void eye. So Billie got to snoop the old-fashioned way. She spent the next few hours prowling the house, avoiding servants. Roche had helpfully left an agenda on her desk, which Billie memorized.

Billie spent longer in the house than she should have, really. Uneasiness nagged at her; there was something she was forgetting, some mistake she wasn’t seeing, someone watching her around every corner. But finally she forced herself to acknowledge she had gotten what she came for. Billie was out of practice on a normal job, and waiting for Daud’s decision was bothering her. That was all.

If he decided to go through with Jessamine’s assassination anyway…Billie would deal with that when she got to it.

She left through a different window, closer to Roche’s office, to check the route, and made her way back to the whalers’ base. The sun was halfway past the horizon, and the shadows were deep enough for Billie to catch the purple flare of whale-oil lamps inside a condemned building. Billie jerked to a stop on an opposite balcony.

The Outsider, she reminded herself, didn’t have to speak to her at shrines. He almost certainly knew she was back. And if Billie was working for Daud again, she would have to go to his shrines sooner or later.

Besides, Daud had always appreciated the runes.

She transversed into the apartment. The door was barred, but cracked open. With a careful tethering she was able to knock the bar away. The stench of plague and mold that billowed out had her wrinkling her nose and watching for weepers and rats.

But the apartment was silent, and still save for the flickers of lamplight on the walls. Billie avoided the mattress in one corner where two half-rotted corpses were curled around each other. One seemed much smaller than the other in the fleeting glance she took; she didn’t want to know the rest.

Killing the Outsider had been wrong. Not because he was an innocent; no one who saw what Daud or Delilah could become, and give them power anyway, could be innocent. It was like calling Billie’s clients innocent just because their own hands were clean. Killing the Outsider had been wrong because of what it said about her, that she would use another man as her scapegoat or Daud’s, like they could sacrifice him along with all the guilt and blame. The Outsider had just been another street kid given way more power than he knew what to do with.

Still. Billie hadn’t seen a single shrine without evidence of death, disease, madness.

Sometimes she wondered.

Holding her breath, Billie ran her hands along the driftwood of the altar, and let it out when nothing happened. She turned and left the way she had come.

* * *

Daud found her the next morning leaning on the bathroom sink, scowling as she tried to even out the sides of her newly-shorn hair. “That’s different,” he said.

Billie made a noncommittal sound to go with his noncommittal comment. She liked short hair, even though the upkeep was a pain. At least with two hands she didn’t have to rely on Anton’s shaky command of a razor to get the back. “Any news?”

“I turned down the contract,” Daud said.

Billie couldn’t hide her relief. “Good. That’s—good.” There would always be other threats to the empress’s life; she doubted Burrows would stop with them. But the whalers were the biggest. The only ones, really, who stood a chance. Emily Kaldwin would grow up with both her parents. She set down her comb and scissors. “Quinn picked up a job, by the way. Woman named Roche, decent estate in the Legal District.”

Daud snorted. “Let’s hope it’s not as much of a disaster as Quinn’s last job.”

“Nah, I checked. Nothing to do with old grudges, and the client’s been good to us before. Not much prep, either. We’ve got plenty of supplies stashed away and there isn’t much watch presence in the neighborhood.” As far as Billie remembered, the watch really only went out that far later in the plague, once the poor were pushed up against the rich by the rising tide.

Daud nodded. “Tomorrow night work, then?”

The corner of Billie’s mouth ticked up. Uneasiness lingered, but she ignored it. An ordinary job with Daud, one she didn’t have to worry about afterward—this was what she had missed. Shit, why couldn’t he have just asked her to pick off the Eyeless back in Serkonos? They could’ve worked together like old times instead of whatever her last weeks in the future had been.

“Why wait?” Billie asked. Daud’s borrowed power hummed under her skin, so much less than what she once had but comforting all the same. “Let’s go tonight.”

* * *

Roche nearly threw off the entire plan when she decided to go for a midnight cup of tea just as Daud opened her door, but she was dead within an hour, no alarms raised.

Billie should have been satisfied. She’d worked with Daud again, the way she’d spent the better part of two decades dreaming about—and all that came out of it was another person dead. Because of her. For no reason other than money changing hands.

It just seemed so…pointless.

 _No_ , she told herself as they made their way back from the house. She hadn’t always needed a cause to kill for—why did the lack of one bother her now? _No, you don’t get to turn into a soft touch_.

Daud was ahead of her, but she knew his habits well enough that it was easy to transverse into his path. He didn’t jump when he materialized directly in front of her, but Billie felt him freeze. The wind whipped his coat against her thighs. “I found you something nice,” she said, and tugged on his wrist as she stepped backward, toward the edge of the roof. “It’s not far out of our way.”

“Can you be a little more vague?”

“Well—”

“ _Billie_.”

She rolled her eyes and transversed across the street.

The apartment with the shrine was empty as before. Billie pushed through the balcony door and jerked her head toward the shrine. “In there.” She let the door fall shut behind them.

Daud glanced around the apartment, lip curling at the bodies. “Good find,” he said, crossed the room, and reached for the whalebone rune on the shrine.

Violet lamplight flared and dimmed—not just into darkness but faded, smearing gray. Billie sucked in a breath. _“Fuck.”_

Daud gave her a sharp look. Of course he was still able to see her chats. Even though as far as Billie knew, he hadn’t spoken to the Outsider in years. (He’d tried to hide it, but she read his journal.) “You’re seeing this?”

She didn’t have the chance to respond. “Did you think you could avoid me that easily?” asked the Outsider, and Billie flinched. He leaned on the door, as human as she had ever seen him.

Her pulse thundered in her ears. “You never cared about me before,” she managed. The Outsider didn’t seem likely to turn violent. Even when Billie was coming to kill him, he hadn’t stopped her. Goaded her, really. But…

“You hadn’t killed me before,” he countered. The Outsider didn’t smile as such, but something in his face suggested condescending amusement.

_“What.”_

Of course he’d have to find out like fucking _this_. Billie’s eyes screwed shut. She’d gone back planning specifically to not kill the Outsider, but the little asshole was testing her. “It’s…a long story. You know those nightmares?”

She could feel Daud’s eyes on her. The Outsider’s not-smile grew more pronounced. “You lied.”

“Well, yeah.” She scowled back at Daud. The way they were standing it was hard to keep an eye on both at once; having one or the other at her back felt dangerous, and she fought the urge to duck for cover. To the Outsider she said, “It won’t be happening again, for what it’s worth. But you probably know that.”

Something flickered across the Outsider’s face—anger? Disappointment? “Your regret was worth enough to take you back here. Far enough to erase all your mistakes…not that you’re doing much with the chance.”

The words hit her some place low and deep. “I’ve done enough. The empress—” She grit her teeth. Some things Daud should find out because Billie told him, not because she had to justify herself to some teenager on a power trip. “Most of my problems are taken care of.”

“You could have ended Delilah’s coup without Emily, you know,” said the Outsider. Billie blinked at the non-sequitur. “You could have rejoined Breanna’s coven and destroyed it from the inside out, or murdered the duke with the little wooden gazelle he still keeps in his vault. It would have been messy. You might have died. But you also might have done it.”

He leaned closer as he spoke, closely enough that Billie should have been able to feel breath or body heat. But the Outsider was insubstantial as a ghost. The heart she tore open and the blood that ran warm over her hands weren’t there. “Why are you telling me this?”

“When,” he asked, “will you stop looking for someone to follow?”

Billie opened her mouth—to say what she didn’t know—but the Outsider disappeared before she could retort, leaving her face burning and fists clenched in silent indignation.

“What was that?” Daud snapped, eyes narrowed. “Because it sounded like—”

Billie resisted the urge to reach for her weapon. Or transverse somewhere far, far away. “Time travel. I’m from sixteen years in the future. It’s a long story.” Daud’s eyebrows crept toward his hairline. “Come on, old man. If I were lying now I’d come up with a much better story.”

Daud snorted. “Fair enough.” Then he transversed past her to the kitchen, pulled out one of the rickety chairs, sat down, and leaned back. “Well. Job’s done. We’ve got time.”

A hysterical laugh wrenched its way from Billie’s throat. She collapsed into the chair opposite him and yanked off her mask. The plague-ridden air hit her tongue; she almost gagged from the smell and her own nerves.

Daud pulled a flask from his belt and passed it to her. Billie took an experimental sniff.

“It’s _water_ ,” he said.

“For an assassin, you’re so boring,” said Billie. Daud let out a huff of laughter and then scowled more intensely to make up for it.

She told him everything, from the Empress to Delilah to Karnaca and back. A few times Daud interrupted to ask for clarification, but for the most part he let her talk. “I left the Outsider’s body and it just…it was wrong. While I made my way out all I could think was that everything went to shit after we killed the Empress. A rift showed up in the Void, so I stepped through. And I was back in Dunwall.” Deflated, Billie shrugged and propped her chin on her hand. Her mouth was dry, and when she tried to take a drink, she found the flask was too. Looking away from Daud felt weak; she made herself stare instead.

Since he was watching some point over her shoulder, he obviously didn’t have the same thought. “I see. And you didn’t tell me this sooner because…”

Fucking typical. “Because I betrayed you,” Billie snapped back, “or I could have, in a few months—wasn’t the kind of thing I wanted to volunteer.”

“You also didn’t follow through. Besides, it’s hardly a surprise.” A muscle in Daud’s jaw ticked. Billie straightened in her chair. “We’re assassins. I know it’s nothing personal.”

He was lying—whether only to her or to both of them she didn’t know. Billie snorted. “Of course it was personal. It was you.”

At that he finally looked at her. Billie’s chin jutted up.

“Still, you came here,” Daud said after a long moment. “We’ll figure out the business with the coup and this Delilah.”

The corner of Billie’s mouth ticked up and she reached for her mask. They’d spent long enough talking, he meant. Time to get back home.

_When will you stop looking for someone to follow?_

“What else do you know? Anything that could help us?”

Billie frowned. “A few things. Nothing big, besides the empress.” She hesitated and then scowled at herself for the hesitation. Arguing with him on the Wale felt like wasting precious time, but she’d known how to do it at one point. “I want to dig into the coup some more. Just because Burrows couldn’t buy us doesn’t mean he’ll slow down.”

Daud raised an eyebrow. “If someone hires us, we’ll deal with him.” Like anyone could afford to take out the royal spymaster besides…well, the empress.

“Why can’t we deal with him now?” Billie’s eyes narrowed. “If anyone deserves to die—”

She knew it was the wrong thing to say even before Daud snapped, “It’s not about deserve. We’re not the some moral crusade, Lurk—and we don’t do politics.” He stood, already dismissing her.

Billie shot to her feet. Her chair clattered to the floor, throwing up clouds of dust. “I do."

Instead of arguing with her, Daud rolled his eyes. “Forget about Burrows and his coup. If you want to prepare for a possible contract on him, fine—otherwise, focus on jobs we actually have.” Dismissive. Like he was—her boss.

Right. There was where her urge to throw things at him had got to. Stopping a coup, killing a god—those were stories to him. She was still same old Billie Lurk, just with extra baggage.

It was really the best reaction she could hope for.

She grit her teeth so hard Daud shot her a look.

Billie remembered a handful of nights on the Dreadful Wale, trading stories and cigars, sitting too close to him on the cot with his journal tucked between her back and the blackboard. Ages ago, now. Working with Daud again had made her the happiest she’d been in years. It had also perhaps been the worst decision in a life full of bad ones.

“Fine,” she said, and put on the mask.

* * *

The next morning, Billie left a note on Daud’s desk. _Have an idea about a job. Will give you the details if it works out._

Then she crossed the city and rediscovered her old route up Dunwall Tower.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, comments and kudos are great.
> 
> i was going to apologize about the clash here, but...sometimes reuniting with someone after a long absence is hard, and sometimes people you care about change and that change is hard. maybe it's ooc for billie to actually have some beef with daud since they were so cozy in DOTO, but there were mitigating circumstances. billie pushing against his decisions was obviously always part of their relationship; now she's been her own boss for a while, she's working for a very-much-not-dying daud who treats her like a subordinate rather than the peer she feels like she should be, and it sucks.
> 
> i tend to write daud as a one-dimensional badass boss, sometimes, and then give him Emotions and feel like i went overboard. so uh. hope what's here feels right. and the outsider is...i mean he was weirdly chill with potentially being killed in DOTO. more of my headcanons for him will come out later. i hope it will become clearer why he's acting the way he acts, but he's more of a narrative device here than a person.
> 
> these are very long notes, and now they are over. thank you for reading! next update will be posted by 3/22. it will finally use that billie & jess tag.


	3. Insubordination

Most jobs took a day or two of planning. If someone in the city was particularly hated, the whalers made sure to have a cache and a plan in place already; those jobs might only take hours from contract to payment.

Infiltration of Dunwall Tower and surveillance of Jessamine and Emily Kaldwin had taken weeks. Not only did they have the tower’s transversal-unfriendly architecture (Billie swore it was built by someone who knew exactly how far they could transverse) and generous security to contend with, but they also had to plan a kidnapping. Any criminal could tell you that exits were trickier than entrances. Exits with a hostage were worse, even if that hostage was only ten.

For the empress’s assassination the whalers needed to know Jessamine’s routine, Emily’s routine, guard rotations, and ways into and out of the tower; and they needed to learn all of it without being caught themselves. So of course Billie had done the reconnaissance. Much of it still rattled around her brain, but she hadn’t had Corvo to contend with and was due a refresher.

Still, getting in was much easier than she had expected. It was early enough in the morning that the fog around Dunwall Tower hadn’t yet dissipated. Only a small crew were watching the waterlock, and that not very closely. They probably didn’t feel the need with the gate down. Billie swam under it and then transversed the rest of the way up. Between the slick fabric of her coat and a bone charm on her belt, she was dry before she reached the top.

The empress liked to be outdoors when she could. That had made it easier for the whalers to get to her. In the mornings, Billie remembered, she’d often go for a walk at the gazebo or in the garden.

Hiding out around the gazebo was a little too potent of a parallel for Billie’s taste. Ducking past the guards, she transversed to the top of the wall surrounding the tower grounds and followed it to the gardens instead. They’d decided not to ambush Jessamine there because they would have to carry Emily so much farther over the grounds, but spying was easy in the gardens. Billie liked to watch from just inside the hedge. The branches didn’t hide much from her, and the bright flowers broke up her outline and kept her coat from standing out too much through the leaves.

So she waited. And waited.

Usually on long stakeouts Billie kept herself entertained by reviewing her plans. Figured out what to do if things went bad. When she was younger she’d wonder what Deirdre might say at the things she saw, and then Deirdre’s voice all but faded from her memory so she started wondering about Daud’s opinion instead. Now she couldn’t help but think of Emily. What had she done in these gardens after she became empress? What was she doing now?

(Probably sleeping late. Billie hadn’t watched Emily as closely, but she remembered that much.)

Daud came up in her thoughts a few times, too, but she tried not to dwell on him.

Finally, Billie spotted the empress and her bodyguard slipping into the gardens, heading for Jessamine’s favorite table in the corner. It was out of the entrance’s direct line of sight, but at an angle that let Jessamine and Corvo see anyone coming in. As long as they couldn’t just transverse over a hedge. Billie supposed they couldn’t plan for everything.

The empress said something that made Corvo laugh and squeezed his hand under the table. Billie blinked. More than one reason to hide in the gardens, she supposed. Too bad she was about to ruin it for them.

It would have been nice to still have her transversal markers. Ah, well. Billie kept the hedge between herself and the entrance as she stepped into their line of sight and waved.

Corvo turned instinctively at the motion, hand going to the gun at his hip. Jessamine looked up and her eyes went wide; she ducked behind Corvo’s arm. Billie almost rolled her eyes at the weakness. Then she remembered how Jessamine’s last act was to put herself between Emily and Daud’s sword.

“I’m not here for trouble,” she said. “I’ve got information.”

Corvo’s stance didn’t change, but Jessamine leaned forward. Her knuckles went white against her bodyguard’s sleeve. “What sort of information?”

“You know who I work for?” Jessamine nodded. “Hiram Burrows tried to hire us to kill you and kidnap the princess after your bodyguard leaves in a few weeks. Obviously we didn’t take the job,” Billie added at Corvo’s bristling. Jessamine only nodded again, composed and considering. “I wouldn’t be talking to you if we had. Thought you should know there’s a coup brewing, that’s all.”

Impatiently, Jessamine batted Corvo out of her space. Corvo holstered his weapon with some reluctance. “Hiram…Do you have any proof?”

“No,” she admitted. Probably Billie could have dug up evidence of Burrows’ more illicit business. No one _started_ with killing the empress and causing a plague. But finding explicit proof would be difficult and time-consuming, and whatever she did find might be excused as being part of Burrows’s position. Still, his co-conspirators weren’t nearly as competent… “But we could dig something up.”

Jessamine’s head cocked to the side. “And why should I trust assassins’ information?”

Billie shrugged. “I’ve got an honest face,” she deadpanned.

Jessamine gave her a polite smile. “Unfortunately, I can’t see it.”

“If I told you how to end the plague—not a formula for the cure, but how to find it—would you hear me out? I can give you plans, collaborators. And your bodyguard won’t have to leave your side. Burrows told us about the little trip he’s planning in Clans.” Not that Corvo had done Jessamine much good in the end, but he’d be effective enough against anyone who wasn’t a witch. And, Billie suspected, the empress would be more inclined to trust while he was there.

If the empress was surprised by Billie’s information she didn’t know it, too distracted by the thought of a cure. “Every physician and natural philosopher in the empire is working on a cure for the plague. How would you know how to end it?”

“There are two who need to work together. You already know Anton—” Billie made a face at the slip and quickly added, “Sokolov. The other is Piero Joplin. He’s got a decent preventative already; it just isn’t as widely distributed. But if he and Sokolov can be…persuaded…to work together, they’ll come up with one that could even cure weepers.”

“Joplin…” Jessamine frowned. “Corvo, where have I heard that name before?”

“Sokolov ranted about him once after dinner. Graduated from the Academy faster than anyone in history,” Corvo prompted. Billie’s eyebrows lifted. Somehow, despite all the ways their lives had intersected, she hadn’t ever heard him speak. Corvo’s voice was different than she imagined, deeper and less rough. In her head he always sounded more like Daud.

“Right, including Anton,” Jessamine said. She and Corvo grinned at each other like they were sharing an inside joke. Billie had listened to enough of Anton’s tipsy after-dinner rants to understand the punchline. Then the empress turned back to Billie. “How are you so sure this will work?”

“Magic,” said Billie. According to Anton, Jessamine had seemed interested in his work regarding the Void. Billie didn’t think that excuse was much of a risk.

Jessamine cocked her head, all polite skepticism. “Magic?”

Besides, she liked having an excuse to show off.

Billie transversed across the gardens and leaned on the table. Jessamine jumped; Corvo went for his sword this time.

“Well,” Jessamine said. She took a deep breath and gave Billie a small smirk. “Sokolov and Joplin will need to be _persuaded_ to work together? I think we can manage.”

Everyone said that Jessamine was beautiful. Probably she was, in a plain sort of way. Billie had always been more attracted to interesting faces than pretty ones; she’d never understood Jessamine’s appeal separate from the mythos that cropped up after her death.

Right then, as Jessamine vaguely threatened one of Billie’s (former) best friends, she saw why half the country was in love with her.

It was possible that Billie had a type.

“When they cure the plague, I’ll be back,” she said. “You might want to talk to a physician, too—Dr. Galvani. He won’t help much with the cure, but he has some interesting theories about its origins.” Galvani had been splashed across the papers in the wake of the plague, talking about what his research showed about the way it spread. Maybe a long shot, but it might help Jessamine believe her when it came to Burrows.

Jessamine nodded, more polite than sincere. “I do hope you aren’t lying to me,” she said.

“Dunwall’s my city, too,” Billie said. Even sixteen years after she left, it had still been home. More than the _Wale_ , more than the sea. “Not many people stand to benefit from a plague. Or a regime change.” She paused. “If you do want the whalers to dig up information on the coup, though, we’ll need money.”

“I’d be more worried if you didn’t,” said Jessamine dryly. “Thank you for the information, Miss…?”

“Welcome,” said Billie, tossed off a salute, and excused herself via transversal before Jessamine had the chance to dismiss her.

* * *

“Hi,” Billie said, leaning over Daud’s bed. He reached for the knife he kept under his pillow; Billie wiggled it between her fingers, and he squinted menacingly at her. She counted it a win. At least he hadn’t gone for the gun. “I tracked down Timsh’s niece, Thalia—she hired you in my future. She wants him dead or out of the way, some forgery so she gets the estate…” Her words trailed off into a jaw-cracking yawn. She’d spent almost twenty-four full hours running all over the city.

Daud was silent for a beat too long. He woke ready to fight, not follow a sentence. She’d have to make sure whatever rookie was on kitchen duty made extra-strong coffee today. “Any reason why this couldn’t wait until morning?”

“It is morning.” Orange light was peeking over the horizon and between gaps in buildings. “Besides, it’s nice to remember you’re a human being sometimes.” The shadows deepened the lines around his face, making him look more like the man from her future. Her legs ached from so much running on rooftops and squatting on ledges, so she plopped down on the edge of his bed, too tired to second-guess. It wasn’t the kind of thing she would have done back then, but why bother pretending to be her younger self? Billie leaned against the wall; the straps of her mask dug into her head. “Anyway, Thalia is prepared to pay us up front, plus a cut of her inheritance when it comes through.”

Daud rubbed his eyes and sat up. “Any more leads from the future?”

“Lizzy Stride lands in Coldridge in a few months.”

“Hmm.” He’d always liked Lizzy. “Wouldn’t hurt to have her owe us a favor.”

Billie hummed agreement and passed the knife back. His hand closed over it, and she tapped the mark there. “That’s his name, you know. The Outsider’s.”

He blinked, obviously thrown by the subject change, but curiosity won out. “How do you say it?”

Shaking her head, Billie said, “Not sure. Only the dead can, apparently.” When she imagined it she thought it must sound like the odd, distorted voices that sounded whenever she used her powers. Maybe the language, like the powers, was instinctive. Malchiodi’s notes hadn’t included a pronunciation guide.

“What’s the Outsider’s game with you?” Billie raised an eyebrow. Daud couldn’t see it behind the mask, of course, but he knew her body language well enough. “I was there. I heard him egg you on.”

She blew out a long breath. He was right, although she’d tried not to think of it in those terms. From the first time they’d spoke the Outsider had goaded her. In the future the Outsider hadn’t asked if she wanted an eye of stone and an arm of leather and wire. He’d changed her forever, marked her, maimed her, and asked if she would like it on his way out. Perfectly calculated to scare her. He had given her the power she always wanted and guaranteed she’d hate him for it. Even when she was on her way to kill him, he’d seemed almost eager. Ready for her, or ready to get it over with.

“I think he’s tired,” she said finally. “He doesn’t want to be what that cult made him anymore. He wants things to change, but he’s afraid of it, too.”

Daud gave her a sharp look. “Careful. Don’t…project.”

She barked out a laugh. “I’ve never been scared of change, Daud.”

“Not what I meant,” he grumbled, and rubbed his eyes again. “Sounds like a lot happened to the bastard in your future. Even if he knows what happened, he might not be the same person. The same being.”

Billie chewed on her lip. Maybe he was right. She didn’t even know how the Outsider knew what happened—if he somehow remembered it, if he plucked the memories from her mind. Time in the Void was obviously pretty fucked, so she’d assumed the former.

“And what’s your game, Billie?”

She’d had a lot of practice not acting shifty, which came in handy during times like this. “If I weren’t so pure of heart, I’d think you’re suspicious.”

Daud crossed his arms. She found her eyes drawn to the motion and was glad, not for the first time, to be wearing the mask. “You weren’t happy with me yesterday. And then you disappeared all today. Don’t tell me it was to look for Timsh.”

“Stole the Manwaring street courthouse blueprints, too. Vladko was right about that sewer tunnel,” she offered. Daud remained unamused, and she waved him off, ignoring the pit of guilt in her stomach. “I haven’t taken anyone’s orders in a while, alright? Just needed to clear my head.”

He nodded. Judging by his frown he wasn't letting her completely off the hook, but he didn't push her further, either. “What was it like, having your own ship?”

Billie did a mental double-take at the question. No one asked her things like that anymore. The closest she got was Anton pulling her into his philosophical rambles, but she was so cagey about much of her past that even her old friends avoided personal talk. “Quiet. Too quiet, sometimes—I was always busy, but mentally, it wasn’t…” She shrugged. Days or weeks into a voyage, she tended to get bogged down in her thoughts, especially when traveling alone. Journals and audiographs had helped. “But I got to see the most amazing things. And the storms were incredible.”

“The storms?”

How could she even describe a storm at sea? The way the lightning reflected off the spray, the deck slick under her feet, only a flimsy rail and a rope around her waist keeping her from tumbling into the ocean…Anton tried to help once and ended up breaking his leg. After that he only worried belowdecks and then joined her for her usual celebratory drink once the worst of it passed. “Storms were fun.”

Daud gave her a long, considering sweep she would have recognized coming from anyone else. “In your future,” he began.

“Yeah?" She made a face. Shit, why did her voice have to come out sounding like _that_.

He shook his head. “You’re…different.”

Not what he’d meant to say. “Yeah. How much different were you at twenty-four?” She shook her head. “Never mind. You were probably born with a scowl and a pack of cigars.”

Daud cracked a grin at that. And Billie wanted a lot of things. None of them would be fair for her to take now.

* * *

Over the next few weeks, Billie kept going as best as she could. She wouldn’t last forever in the assassination business. Not because she thought it was all wrong or some shit like that; she’d known some people just shouldn’t be alive even before she killed Radanis Abele. But plotting out deaths of people she didn’t know, for people she didn’t know, was a step back. She couldn’t keep it up for long. Billie stuck to targets she didn’t have to feel guilty over, and waited to hear about a cure.

One day she heard a couple of novices talking in the remains of the library, and transversed behind one of the bookshelves.

“He just got him sent to Coldridge,” one was saying. Thorpe, Billie thought—one of the ones who died in the Overseer raid. “Had to pickpocket Timsh, but he couldn’t kill him? I don’t know. Seems like he’s losing his touch.”

“Maybe that was part of the job,” said the other. Hobson had been with the whalers a while; he’d never be brilliant, but he pulled his weight.

“No, I heard him talking to the niece. She didn’t care.”

“It’s just one job,” Hobson reminded him. “Don’t worry about it. He’s the boss, he knows more about the job—there might be more going on.”

Billie didn’t stick around to hear them argue about it, but she stayed in a good mood for the rest of the day.

* * *

Billie came awake slowly and strangely without urgency; it reminded her of the one time she’d been drugged as a kid. Even before she registered the whalesong and faint blue light she knew something was off, and forced herself to sit up, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

Her bunk lay suspended in a vast blue sky. The wall behind her had peeled away along with most of the floor in front of it, leaving only a single path hemmed by bookshelves and crumbling stone columns.

This was the Void. It had to be. Just not like she had ever seen it. What had turned this into the wreck of crumbling black stone she had seen in the future? Was it Delilah? Or had it been her?

Unsettled and with few options, Billie pushed herself to her feet. There was only one way to go. Her powers didn’t respond, either, so she had to stick to the path instead of transversing to the warped islands of stone and metal floating around her. Its vastness reminded her of the ocean, but it was too quiet. If the water she saw pouring from broken pipes among the islands made a sound, it was lost to the Void.

Her path ended at a single window. She looked through it and saw a gazebo in front of her, just close enough that she could make the jump. And on the floor of the gazebo lay a body sprawled over blood-red graffiti. _IT WAS NOT YOUR HAND THAT HELD THE KNIFE._

“For fuck’s sake,” Billie snarled, and jumped. The paint was still wet, and smeared on her boots as she walked past Jessamine’s prone form. “Is there a point to this?”

The Outsider didn’t respond, but Billie could feel him watching, a prickling awareness between her shoulder blades. She looked over the edge of the island and saw—

Delilah in her studio, putting the last touches on Timsh’s portrait. Were they still together now? She knew Delilah had used Timsh for some kind of experiment, and that it had worked, but that was well before Billie approached her. She jumped down again, hissing at the impact on her legs. Having her powers back had spoiled her. On the _Wale_ Billie had had no trouble jumping from deck to deck.

“If you want to talk, talk,” she told the Void, and got no response.

The next island was further away: ahead, not just straight down. Billie looked suspiciously at the Void. There was nothing for her to hit, if she missed, nothing to slow her fall—but gravity was obviously not quite right here, either.

If she fell into the Void it probably wouldn’t be pleasant, she figured, but there was no point worrying before she jumped. So she did: took a running leap and landed next to Anton and Joplin. Joplin hunched over a lab table covered in notes and dissected rats, while Anton poured a purple-red concoction down a weeper’s throat.

“Oh,” Billie breathed. So they were working together, at least, and making headway. And hopefully doing so more ethically than Anton had in the past, with Jessamine’s supervision. Curious, now, she poked at Anton’s arm. He felt like a marble statue. “Guess you figured out something.”

The path from this island wasn’t a drop like the others. Instead, smaller chunks like stepping-stones led away from it, up to a larger island in the distance. Billie couldn’t see what was on top of it. But she had an idea. She swallowed and jumped to the first stone, careful at first and then falling into a rhythm, forgetting her nerves as the lone figure on the next island came into view. Kneeling, encased in stone, hand outstretched.

She touched the Outsider’s hair. In the ritual hold it had been coarse and warm from his body heat. Now this, too, was stone. A replica. “Is that what this is about?” she asked. Magic sent a frisson down her spine, telling Billie he’d made an appearance at last. “You’re…trapped there, aren’t you? You can’t get rid of the cultists. Or directly change anything. All you can do is give someone power and hope they’ll do better than the last one you picked.”

Billie turned to the Outsider. He looked…disturbed, his face all naked hunger and hope. Billie had the wild thought that he was going to be sick. She grabbed his hand and pressed it to her eye. “I want to do better this time.”

The Outsider stared at her for a moment. “Of all the people who want second chances,” he began, and stopped, shaking his head.

Billie had about a second to appreciate rendering the Outsider speechless. The change hurt. Pressure built in her eye socket until she was sure it would burst; her arm past her elbow burned like the flesh was melting away. But she’d lived through it once, and soon it was done. Billie rubbed at her watering eye with leathery fingers, and traced the ridge of stone along her cheekbone. The familiar hum of magic settled into her bones. Too familiar, really, considering she’d only had them for a few weeks. But this was her power—not Daud’s, not even the Outsider’s, something older and stranger than them both.

“Thank you,” she said. It felt weak, but she wasn’t going to grovel. “I’ll be back soon, alright?” It would take at least a month to get to Shindaery and back, probably closer to two, and she had business to take care of in Dunwall.

And Billie didn’t know what happened to the Marked when the Outsider turned human, but she doubted they just carried on as normal. Daud…was not going to be happy with her, for a lot of reasons.

They’d get past it, she told herself. They always did. As long as it didn't take them a decade and a half this time.

“A few months is nothing. I’ve been here for millennia,” said the Outsider. Then he immediately undermined himself by adding, “Besides, your business here won’t take as long as you think.”

For once she was in the mood to humor him. “Why’s that?”

The Outsider gave her his not-smile again as the Void darkened and blurred around her.

* * *

As soon as she woke up, Billie reached for her mask and gloves. She didn’t want questions, not yet. It was mid-afternoon—she’d been up late scouting the night before—but no one bothered her as she emerged from the bunk, so hopefully they hadn’t seen her changed appearance.

Actually, no one seemed to be around at all.

She took a deep breath, closing her flesh eye, and pulled on the power from her void one. Slipping into her foresight was as natural as it had been the first time. She scouted out around the base and finally saw several people gathered just off the training room, clustered around Rulfio’s radio. Billie broke off the magic, falling back into her own body, and hurried down.

“What—” Billie began, but Thomas answered before she could finish.

“They’ve found a cure for the plague,” he said, wild-eyed and messy-haired, like he’d just woken up himself. “The empress is just giving it away.” The broadcast coming from the radio was saying something about distribution stations and weeper removal crews.

“Shit,” she breathed, grinning despite herself. And then she realized what this meant. Her grin widened. She had an appointment to keep. “Daud?”

Thomas shrugged. Billie ducked out of the room before she used her foresight again, looking for the telltale glow of bone charms, and saw him on a ledge overlooking a weeper camp a few blocks over. Of course, she thought fondly. He wasn’t going to be happy with her; they’d probably both blow up before the end of the day. But she’d helped end a plague and was about to fix a coup. She could enjoy the feeling while it lasted.

Her void arm’s transversals were shorter than the ones Daud’s powers gave her, so it took Billie a few extra moments to reach Daud. “You had something to do with this, didn’t you?” he asked, and Billie froze.

Of course. In her telling, the plague had continued on for months after Jessamine’s death. “I pulled some strings,” she hedged. “There’s a client I’d like you to meet.”

“I’m not going to like this, am I,” he grumped, but when Billie took off, he followed.

The city was in chaos, but for once not _violent_ chaos. Announcements of the cure poured from every speaker, sick people halfway to becoming weepers supported each other down the streets, couriers surrounded by the watch hand-delivered vials of the cure to the ones too sick to leave their beds. Billie and Daud stayed above it all.

With so much going on Billie doubted Jessamine would be in her garden this time, so she led Daud to one of the tower’s sewer entrances. He recognized it, of course.

“You said if someone hired us, we could deal with Burrows,” she reminded him. “I found someone. I persuaded.”

He scrubbed a hand over his face. “You know damn well this isn’t what I meant.”

Not her fault he had a limited imagination. “It’s what you’ve got.” A few well-placed bolts got the grate open. Billie stepped inside the tunnel. “You coming?”

Together they made their way to the outside of Dunwall Tower. Billie used her foresight to find Jessamine in her study; if Daud noticed her doing anything besides focusing, he didn’t mention it. No one but Corvo was with the empress, so she transversed to the balcony above, swung down, and knocked on the window.

The empress started. Billie waved. “ _Lurk_ ,” said Daud, pained.

Jessamine said something to Corvo, who crossed to the door, before opening the window herself. Billie transversed through. “All clear, Boss,” she said, just to be annoying.

“Do you mean—” Jessamine began, and then blinked as the Knife of Dunwall appeared in her office. “Ah. You do.” She pulled the window shut. Corvo looked like he had sucked on several lemons. “Please, have a seat.”

Billie folded herself into one of the delicate wooden chairs in front of Jessamine’s desk; after a moment of hesitation Daud did the same. She bit back a laugh. Not many people were this…polite to them. “So. Convinced of our honorable intentions?”

Jessamine dipped her head. The empress couldn’t seem to hold back a small smile; even the way she carried herself had changed with the threat of the plague gone. “Honorable may be a stretch,” she said lightly, joking rather an insulting, “but if Hiram really is a threat, I’ll need proof. Real proof that I can show to parliament—I don’t just want him dead.”

“Information is going to be hard to come by,” said Billie. “It’ll cost you. And you’ll need a way to get that to us that can’t be traced.” The last thing they needed was for the Abbey to get wind of the empress giving money to witches.

“I can manage that.” Jessamine steepled her fingers. “Who else is involved? Or is it just Hiram?”

“I know a few names.” And not all of the co-conspirators were that impressive. Custis Pendleton had tried to hire the whalers, once, but gave up when he heard the price. Better on bluster than follow-through. “The Pendletons are involved,” she offered. “One of them might talk.” Before Burrows got them to commit, before they had anything to lose.

“Before we get into this,” Daud said, rising from his chair, and Billie started. Usually he got involved in these conversations from the start. “Is there somewhere my lieutenant and I can have a word?”

Oh, she could already feel her hackles raising. Jessamine indicated a door to the side, and Billie followed Daud into a small antechamber. “What are you doing?”

“Getting us the biggest score in the empire,” Billie snapped back, keeping her voice low.

Daud took a step forward, way too into her space. “That’s not what this is about and you know it. We don’t take sides.”

“Of course we take sides!” She had to hiss it so she wouldn’t yell. “We just take the side that pays us first. I can’t keep doing that, I can’t—”

“That’s what you signed on for, Lurk. If you can’t handle that—”

Billie yanked at the buckles of her mask, fingers catching in her hair, and slammed it against Daud’s chest. “You know what? Fine.” Her face felt warm, breaths coming too quick and shallow.

His hands curled around the leather of her mask, brushing against the side of her Void hand, and Billie tried not to shudder. “You’re—what happened to you?” He reached out to touch her eye.

Billie grabbed his wrist before he could, and shoved him back. “Not the point, Daud.”

“You’re, what? Resigning?” Billie nodded and his mouth clicked shut. More shocked than when he learned about the fucking time travel. “Just like that?”

“Just like that.” Her voice shook. She’d threatened to kill him, to steal his gang out from under him, to beat him at his own game. But she’d never, ever threatened to just _quit_. “Dammit, Daud, I—” She bit her lip. Then she grabbed his collar in both her hands and dragged him forward.

Billie hadn’t expected much. Just wanted to make a point. But Daud knew her; he met her halfway. His free hand curled around the back of her neck, strangely gentle even as his mouth against hers was not.

She wanted to let the moment drag on forever. She’d waited long enough to do this, hadn’t she? But the filter of Billie’s mask still prodded insistently at her ribs. She used her grip on Daud’s collar to shove him away again.

“You found this job,” Daud said after a moment, voice hoarse. “The whalers will stay out of your way.”

Billie’s stomach sank, but it was as much concession as she could expect from him. What she actually wanted to hear was impossible. She licked her lips; Daud’s eyes caught on her mouth. “Good.”

“Will you come back to the base for anything?”

“If I do, you won’t see me,” she said. (She didn’t need to go back. Billie knew this could happen, had moved everything that mattered already. But maybe she’d stop by anyway.) Billie shoved him toward the window. “Go. It’s almost time for the watch to change.”

Daud nodded. He leaned toward her and she kissed him again.

There were some things they didn’t say aloud. So she closed her good eye and hoped he understood that she was leaving in spite of this, not because of it.

“See you around, old man,” she said when he pulled back, shining gold where she had marked him.

“I’m sure.” Then he leaned out the open window and transversed away, not looking back. For a moment she watched his silhouette grow smaller as he crossed the tower grounds.

She touched her mouth; her hands were shaking, and she forced them to be still. Then she opened the door and found Jessamine sitting at her desk, sipping a cup of tea, while Corvo waited suspiciously near the entrance. Billie eyeballed him—Emily had gotten her penchant for eavesdropping from somewhere—and then turned to Jessamine. The empress studied her face curiously, but didn’t ask.

“Change of plans,” she said, and sat down in one of the delicate wooden chairs. “I’m taking the lead.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hahaha...yeah. this is easily becoming the most ambitious thing i have ever written, so like, tell me what worked, and then come back in 2 months when i'm not so self-conscious and tell me what didn't.
> 
> next chapter will be up by ~~march 30th~~ april 7th-ish, because real life is kicking my ass.


	4. Professional

Billie pressed into the space between the chimney and the wall, scanning the roofs opposite. A moment ago she’d seen the familiar reflection of sunlight on glass lens. She closed one eye and pulled on the magic of the other.

Thirty, forty, fifty feet away and maybe five feet up, magic spooling from her like a cord, she saw the assassin. Hard to tell who exactly it was in the washed-out blue of her foresight, but she thought one of the higher-ups—maybe Javier or Feodor. They looked the same in uniform. She marked him, snapped back to herself, and rolled her eye.

“’The whalers will stay out of your way,’” she grumbled in a terrible attempt at a baritone. “Choffer.”

Professionally speaking, there was only one acceptable response. She hoped her tail was Feodor. He never had paid her back for breaking her favorite spyglass.

He was out of her direct line of sight now, but she could see his silhouette was perched on something and looking up. If she transversed to the next rooftop she’d be right in view. Billie huffed to herself and scouted again for more whalers or other potential threats. Finding none, she placed one of her transversal markers a few roofs back and across the street. Billie straightened and took a running leap towards the marker, yanking herself forward as soon as she saw a tether of purple light connect to her hand. She landed with a huff, glanced over—he was still watching the rooftops.

Billie loaded her wristbow as she crept closer, crouched above the balcony where the whaler sat, and placed a transversal marker at his side. Then she fired a sleep dart at the stripe of skin between his mask and collar.

The whaler had time to jerk backwards. One hand reached for the dart while the other grabbed for his own wristbow. Billie transversed to her marker and slid her arm around his neck, but she needn’t have bothered; the hemlock took effect and the whaler slumped back into her arms.

She pulled him inside the little abandoned apartment with its bare mattress and mildewed walls, careful to lay his unconscious body away from the windows. Then she peeked under the mask. “Sorry, Javi. Should’ve been more careful.”

(Talking to herself had started on the _Wale._ Probably not the best habit for an assassin, but she knew when to rein it in.)

Billie fished in her coat pocket, tongue between her teeth, and found a stick of charcoal. She scratched out _NICE TRY_ on Javier’s cheek and then let the mask snap into place. His pockets were mostly empty; Billie took a handful of coins and a rewire tool, leaving the wristbow bolts. Then she ducked out onto the balcony and continued her trek through the old waterfront.

Although the plague had been stopped several months early, there were still plenty of dead and plenty of empty real estate. Billie had found an abandoned apartment north of the estate district. It was near enough to Dunwall Tower and on the other side of the river from the old chamber of commerce, so it worked well enough for a base over the last busy week.

Billie ducked into her apartment through the open window. (She never used stairs if she could help it. They felt too confined, and she hated giving up her high ground.) The living space was clean if bare, but she had pushed the table against one wall to use as a makeshift desk and pinned her findings in place above it. That was another habit she should probably leave behind, having everything out in the open, but she’d got it from Daud; it helped her keep track of everything.

She’d started by going through Burrows’s office. He unfortunately didn’t have a handy folder labeled “Crimes” lying around, but he did have notes on his payments to a company specializing in trips to Pandyssia. And Billie had the name of the ship that had become infamous for carrying the plague. It had splashed all over the papers once Corvo exposed Burrows. She’d started there, trying to track crew members, but they kept turning out to be mysteriously dead. Including the one she’d gone to see today. Billie grabbed a pen from the desk and crossed out yet another name. She was down to the captain, who had disappeared off the face of the earth, and a cabin boy.

Jessamine, meanwhile, had started asking questions. Slowly, of course—she couldn’t have Burrows catching on—but she’d begun with Treavor Pendleton. He had confirmed Campbell and Burrows had insinuated something about a parliamentary takeover to this brothers, though he had only heard it secondhand from Morgan and Custis. He’d also told the empress about a journal Campbell kept on his person at all times.

Billie wasn’t much use for questioning. Anyone left alive to connect her face to the empress was a liability, and the empress didn’t want anyone dead, which limited Billie’s options somewhat. But she preferred snooping, anyway. She took one more look at the blueprints of the Office of the High Overseer pinned to the wall, pulled a few more coins and a bottle of S&J Elixir out of her stash, and headed right back out.

Although the whalers had targeted Overseers in the past, Billie had never been into the office itself. She’d scouted it out before, assassinated people in the barracks and yard out back and the alleys to the side, but nothing had ever called for an infiltration. A few times she or Daud had talked about breaking in just because they could, just to make a statement, but it had just been talk. Mostly. She wondered what he would say if he knew she was breaking in now. Probably just tell her not to get cocky about it.

A few times she’d marked Campbell through a window and watched him roam the building, until he finally reached a room in the basement that wasn’t on her otherwise-accurate floor plans. He seemed to retreat there every few hours or so, doing what she wasn’t sure, but judging from the glow of a nearby rune he wouldn’t want witnesses. It seemed like her best bet.

She followed the ledges and roofs around the back of the office, watching Campbell pace upstairs through the corner of her eye. Finally she found a perch just above and to the side of the back door. When an overseer stepped outside a few moments later she transversed behind him and jabbed a sleep dart into his throat. The overseer fell back into Billie’s arms. _Two for two,_ she thought.

A quick check with her foresight didn’t show anyone else looking their way. She tucked the overseer’s body in a dark corner near the entrance, rested her hand over his mask, and _pulled._ Black flecks of Void stone peeled away from the mask instead of the overseer’s flesh and coalesced into her palm. Purple magic flowed over her like a second skin, leaving her feeling strange and heavy. Then she stepped through the door and into the office. Billie took a second to be grateful for the lack of Holger devices in the lobby—probably even overseers got headaches from the stuff—and headed down the stairs. Her magic was running low by the time she reached the bottom; if she could just—

“Evening, brother,” said another overseer as she turned the corner, biting her lip against the flow of magic. Billie stuttered to a halt. The overseer rose from his knees where he’d been peering through the keyhole and dusted his trousers off.

“Evening.” Billie nodded at the door. “Checking for rats?”

The overseer laughed like she’d made a joke. “After the lashes last week, I think they’ve learned to be more discreet,” he said. Billie blinked and then snorted. People were apparently stupid and horny no matter where they were. The overseer clapped her hard on the shoulder as he turned to ascend the stairs. Billie staggered back a step and caught her breath, waiting for the mask in her hand to break.

But it stayed solid, and as soon as the overseer’s back was to her she walked towards the door—the mask burst in her hands, and Billie held back a curse—she opened the door, stepped in, shut it behind her with her heart pounding. She leaned back against the door and buried her face in her hands to hide her snickers. The look on Daud’s face when she told him—

Her laughter cut off. Of course she wouldn’t be telling Daud about this, not any time soon anyway. He wouldn’t get to glare at her and pretend he hadn’t gotten caught in binds just as stupid.

For fuck’s sake. She was forty, mentally at least. She shouldn’t be obsessing like this, not when she had a job to do—and an _interesting_ job at that, the kind of work she’d been missing since she got to the future with none of the associated guilt.

“Still pretty funny,” she muttered.

Except for a few crates and a hideous bust near a blank stretch of wall, the basement was empty. Billie had seen enough hidden rooms to know where this was going. She checked briefly for Campbell, who was still on the other side of the building, and then poked around the bust until the button in its eye depressed. The wall swung forward, and Billie peered in.

 _Stupid and horny,_ she thought, lip curling. _Right._

The near-naked woman on the floor caught her eye first. Billie froze, but the woman was sleeping or dead. She crept closer and the woman shivered at the draft of air from the door; sleeping, then. Billie hit the lever that closed the hidden door. Despite the clear evidence he was at the very least a giant hypocrite, Campbell had left nothing to incriminate himself, no audiographs, no notes. Just her own word and the word of any whores he’d brought down here. Somehow she doubted that would be convincing. The empress couldn’t exactly storm the place. Maybe Corvo could manage to sneak in.

Yellow flashed in the corner of her eye. Billie looked up and saw Campbell’s silhouette nearby, on the same floor; the staircase door, maybe? She wedged herself behind some crates in the nearby alcove and readied her last sleep dart. Damn, she missed hook mines. And tetherings. And Daud’s time-stops. And being able to stab assholes.

When Campbell opened the door and crossed the threshold, Billie fired.

Campbell flinched and took a step back. The dart hit the wall.

“Who—” Campbell started, turning towards the splatter of glass and hemlock. Billie yanked at her magic as he turned back towards her, hand going to his sword hilt. _Dammitdammitfuck—_ she stuck a marker behind him, dropped back into her body and transversed the second that color came back into the world. Campbell managed a choked shout before Billie could squeeze the air from his lungs, but after a few agonizing seconds he slumped against her.

Billie carefully lowered him to the ground and took the book from his pocket. _He didn’t see me. He knew someone was there but he didn’t see me._ Then she looked up and met the very much _awake_ woman’s eyes.

Her first instinct was to shoot. Billie pushed through the adrenaline. “You saw two ordinary burglars,” Billie ordered. When she looked like this people heard the _or else._ The woman’s eyes narrowed and Billie pulled out Campbell’s wallet, bouncing it in her palm. “They’ll search you before you leave, so if you cooperate I’ll put this in the drain pipe outside the Cat’s back entrance. That’s where you’re from, right?”

“Yeah.” The woman relaxed; her words came out a little slurred, and Billie wondered if she was drunk. Or drugged, even. She nodded at Campbell. “Asshole doesn’t even leave blankets.”

Billie snorted and turned to go. Her heart was still pounding, but if she hadn’t killed Campbell she definitely couldn’t just kill a witness. Hopefully the woman would keep to herself.

“You’re one of Daud’s, right?” Billie froze with her hand on the lever. But the woman was talking again before she had to respond. “Tell Javier to get his ass over to see his sister, will you?”

“When I see him.” Billie let out a breath and opened the door.

* * *

No matter how many times she met the empress, Billie felt uncomfortable. It had been the same with Aramis’s mansion. Opulence meant she should be hiding in the rafters, not sitting around a table. But Jessamine slipping out into the city would be even more suspicious than Jessamine having a private meeting, and Billie was three rooms deep into the empress’s suite. They had privacy here; Billie just had to get used to it.

Of course, as soon as she thought this, Emily Kaldwin popped out from a cabinet. “How did you get in through the window?” she asked, strode across the room to Billie’s chair, and leaned down to look at her hand. Billie curled it away but Emily just leaned in further. “Is your hand magic? Does it help you climb? Did Sokolov build it? What happened to your eye?”

The one time Billie had met Emily Kaldwin, age ten-ish, she had been screaming, crying, flailing, and generally being a nuisance. Then she met Emily Kaldwin, age twenty-five: brooding, fidgety, competent but still a bit of a brat. Both left her unprepared for Emily the boisterous child. She’d never been good with kids.

“Yeah, it’s magic. Want to see a trick?” Emily nodded, so she transversed to the top of the cabinet, legs dangling off the edge.

Emily looked first surprised and then intrigued. “I could spy on so many people like that.” She cracked her knuckles absentmindedly. “That’s what you do, right? You’re a spy for mother?”

“Is that what she told you?” Billie frowned. Who trusted a kid with state secrets?

“No, but you’re here,” Emily said, like that explained everything.

Billie hopped down to the ground. “I could be an assassin. You never know.”

Emily shrugged. “If you were then I would fight you. Or Corvo would fight you, he can beat anyone.”

Despite herself, Billie had to grin. Then Jessamine walked through the door, Corvo at her heels. “ _Emily._ You’re supposed to be in your lessons.”

“Lessons are canceled! My tutor got sick.”

Jessamine crossed her arms. “No, she didn’t.”

Emily sighed and trooped through the door. “Nice to meet you, Lady Spy,” she called, and Billie had to hide a snicker. Alright, so Emily was still kind of a brat, but she was a pretty cute one.

“She’s not going to say anything about me, is she?” Billie asked, taking a seat as Corvo shut the door behind them. The lock clicked.

“Emily knows better,” Jessamine said simply, smoothing her trouser legs as she sat down. Billie wondered how but didn’t press. It wasn’t her life on the line. “What have you found?”

Billie dug Campbell’s black book out of her pocket and held it out as she sat down opposite the empress. Jessamine took the book and leafed through the pages, squinting at the coded script. “He knows someone took it, but didn’t see me.”

“Let’s hope this actually has what we need,” Jessamine said, and glanced up from the book. “But well done. I’ll have a code-breaker take a look at it.”

Jessamine’s praise didn’t light her up the way Daud’s did, in part because she was freer with it, but satisfaction filled her all the same. “You know to find someone who won’t report back to Burrows?”

“I’ve managed to hold on to my throne for some time, you know,” Jessamine said dryly. “I do have some idea of who to trust.”

 _Clearly you don’t,_ Billie thought, but bit her tongue against it. Burrows was uniquely situated in Jessamine’s blind spot, to be fair. No one else was allowed to operate so close to the empress with so little oversight. “I’m still looking into a few other leads. Something from his own mouth would be best, but…” She shrugged. Maybe with the plague gone and no way to kill the empress he’d do something desperate, something sloppy.

“I’ll see you next week, then, at the same time,” Jessamine said.

“Works for me.” Not like she had a full schedule these days. Billie rose and stretched. “If that’s all—”

“One more question. When we discussed this, you brought Daud with you,” Jessamine began, “but he wasn’t…pleased. Should I be concerned?”

“No,” Billie said without thinking. Whatever was going on with them, he said he wouldn’t get in her way, and he wouldn’t backtrack on that out of spite. “No. He decided not to get the whalers involved in this. That’s all.”

“Does that mean you’re no longer involved with the whalers?” Jessamine asked. Billie pulled a face. “I need to know who exactly I’m working with.”

 _Not involved_ was a stretch. As long as Daud was there she’d be _involved._ “Just me,” she said finally, and crossed her arms over the pit in her chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all! Sorry about the delay; I hit a wall with this one and worked on a couple other things while I let it stew. There's going to be one more full chapter, I think, and then a shorter epilogue to wrap things up. ~~Should have the next one up by 4/20.~~ lmao nvm
> 
> this fic is fun because it makes me get out of my walk-and-talk comfort zone. If I had my way I'd just write dialogue all the time.


	5. Associate

Billie leaned over her mug of tea, breathing in the steam and waiting for it to cool. She was more of a coffee-drinker but it was so much more expensive here than in Karnaca, and while on the empress’s payroll she tried not to steal more than necessary. When she realized she wasn’t alone, it wasn’t because of anything she could pinpoint; maybe it was a disturbance in the air, or something to do with magic, or just instinct. She turned her head to see a swirl of fabric by her conspiracy wall.

“Good morning to you, too.” Daud didn’t startle, of course. Billie propped her cheek on her fist. It was too early to stand up straight; she hadn’t even put on trousers yet. “Did you have someone tail me back here or do it yourself?”

“Does it matter?” He looked her, the same assessing look she remembered from their little nighttime chat.

Billie shrugged. “Professional pride.”

Daud snorted and transversed across the room to lean on the counter next to her. “Myself. Thanks for that note, by the way. Javier’s still sulking.”

Maybe she should be more nervous, given the circumstances, but Billie had never been good at feeling the way she should. She grinned into her tea. “His sister says hello. The one from the Cat.” Billie thought about how that sounded but decided not to explain. Daud made a noise of vague assent. He’d probably remember to pass it on; he was good about that kind of thing for people he liked. “Why are you here?”

He snagged a discarded wristbow bolt and started fiddling with it instead of replying right away. Either going for dramatic effect or about to bullshit her; Billie’s eyes narrowed. “Information,” he said, twirling the bolt between his fingers. “You’re working for the highest power in the empire. It’s worth keeping an eye on.”

Billie nudged him with her hip to see if he’d fumble; he didn’t. “You said you’d stay out of my way.”

“We’re observing, not interfering. You know the difference.”

“Uh-huh.” She took a swig of tea and grimaced as it scalded the roof of her mouth. “Are you going to keep up the impersonal, royal-we shit, or are you going to talk to me?”

_That_ finally got him to look away from the damn bolt. “That’s rich. You’ve been lying since you came back here, Lurk.”

Maybe sixteen years ago she would have quibbled about lies of omission versus actual _lies,_ but she’d spent years in the future hiding her past for a reason. Still. “Would it have made a difference if I hadn’t? Showed up in your office the first day and told you the whole story? I needed to do more than not kill the empress, and you never would have agreed.”

His frown deepened. Billie felt the strange and stupid urge to smooth out the lines on his forehead like a bedspread. She’d have to pop back another twenty years to manage that one, probably. “Maybe not. But you didn’t have to quit.”

She couldn’t exactly rejoin, either. At least not as a lieutenant. Wouldn’t be the best look for a gang boss. “Yeah, I did.”

“Why? Because of what the Outsider said?”

She shook her head. “He wasn’t telling me anything new. Just…putting words to it.” Sometimes stabbing Radanis Abele felt like the first and last independent thing she had done. She’d followed Daud to the ruin of an empire, let Delilah drag her from her home, gave Emily Kaldwin the lead as she escorted her around Karnaca, finally taken Daud’s orders past the end of the world. Of course she’d never been unfailingly loyal, but she’d just—picked a person and stuck to them.

Mostly Daud. Probably it wasn’t healthy. But cutting and running hadn’t exactly worked, either.

Helping the empress was a cause, at least. Billie had decided to help her because she wanted to, not because of any particular love for the Kaldwins.

“Just because I quit doesn’t mean…” She scrubbed a hand over her face. “You don’t have to keep this up, either. You’re tired. I remember how that looks.”

She expected a protest; indignation, maybe. _Tired_ sounded a lot like _weak,_ or it had to her back then, and Daud had always been quick to shut down that kind of insinuation. Instead he slouched back against the counter, propping himself up on one elbow, and stared past her at the ground. “Fifteen years between leaving Dunwall and killing the Outsider, you said. Did I do anything worth doing in that time?”

She hadn’t expected him to sound _afraid._

Maybe she should have. There had been moments after killing the empress where he almost seemed to want to talk about this shit; she’d shut him down pretty quick. “I don’t know,” she said slowly. When Billie had first started following his trail she’d found assassinations, break-ins, a string of odd contract jobs along the coasts. By then he’d already started looking for ways to kill the Outsider, of course. She had found little information about his life before that. On the _Wale,_ the past—or at least, that chunk of the past—hadn’t seemed important; she hadn’t asked. “But for what it’s worth, you were alone then. You don’t have to be.”

She gulped at her tea like she could swallow the words, take back saying something that pathetic. Then she let go of the mug and turned to her makeshift desk with the web of information pinned above it.

His voice followed her, both amused and bemused. “Are you asking me to be your lieutenant?”

“Business associate.” Subordinate Daud would never work out in the real world. (Fantasies were her business.) “Partner, if you’re impressive enough.”

“Hmm.” He followed behind her, letting the old floor creak this time. “What’s the business?”

Billie tapped at the cheap wooden panels between her pictures and maps and notes. “There are a lot of people who need taking down. We don’t need to kill them for that.”

“You’ve been thinking about this a lot.”

“I’ve had downtime.” Wasn’t like she had any old haunts to visit, any long dead friends. If she didn’t plan out a future she’d be stuck dwelling on the past again, spiral like on the _Wale._ Billie turned and almost elbowed into Daud in the process; he was even more in her personal space than usual. “Any chance you have proof of Burrows’s other contracts?”

Daud snorted. “No. Suspicious bastard made sure of that.”

“Damn.” At least he was willing to tell her that much.

He made a noise of agreement. Billie relaxed and her desk pressed a cold line against her thighs. When had she gotten cornered against it? “At the tower, before I left. What was that?”

“A kiss, Daud.” The shirt she’d slept in was too large to be a proper _shirt,_ but as she spoke she realized it was appallingly short. Daud _had_ seen her like this before; there was no real privacy among the whalers. But…there was no real privacy among the whalers. And they were alone in her stolen apartment. Her head tilted and she made her shoulders relax. Teasing, at least, felt natural. “Don’t tell me you haven’t had one of those before.”

He made an odd face, and she almost pressed the point. He’d basically been celibate as long as they’d known each other. “Were we like that in your future?” he asked.

“No.” Wanting Daud in however many ways she could have him had been a constant since she’d first followed him home. Billie had dealt with it on the _Wale._ Daud’s last days shouldn’t be tainted with that particular awkwardness. At her denial he looked oddly relieved. “Did you mind?”

“No.” _Of course not,_ said his tone. His hands came to rest on stacks of files and notebooks just past her hip.

Billie stared. Maybe she should have anticipated _something,_ but all her thoughts about Daud and _this_ had her as the aggressor. It didn’t make sense otherwise. “Okay. Good talk.”

Daud tapped a finger under her void eye. “It suits you,” he said, not helping at all, and Billie fought back a shiver and the urge to grab his hand, keep it there on her face.

But he had the whalers to get back to, and she had her job, so when he looked back over his shoulder she knew it was time for this little meeting to end. Part of her wanted to just lunge at him again, but she half-expected him to turn into a stone wall if she pushed too much. Besides, there was more at stake than her younger body’s hormones. “Think about what I said. If you want out…”

“Alright.” Daud hesitated, hand against her jaw like he was holding her in place; then he leaned forward, and was gone again so quickly Billie could have imagined the press of his mouth against her cheek.

Jumpy, she thought. Like a kid stealing his first kisses behind a dumpster, or whatever kids hid behind when they weren’t playing in alleys. She shut the window behind him and grinned when she realized: Billie had always come after him, before. It felt nice the other way around.

* * *

Billie had spent most of her life in Dunwall near the waterfront, where the city came to a hard stop against the sea. Further inland the city dissipated like fog instead, the thick clusters of stores, apartments, and factories giving way to low roofs spaced farther and farther apart past the old city wall.

The captain of the ship Burrows had hired disappeared weeks before, when the plague was still in full swing. Either dead or fled the city, Billie supposed; maybe she was further in the country still. When she had found the captain had a sister who still lived in Dunwall, she’d decided to pay her a visit. Well, visit the sister’s empty house, anyway, since she and her husband had both left for work at a local school. The first time Billie had dropped by she had seen a bone charm glowing in the attic; now its light shone downstairs. Looked like the good captain had given her sister something at least.

Billie cracked open the back door and used her foresight to scout out the place. It was more spacious than cramped city apartments but nothing really special, just a front room sectioned off from the kitchen by the stairs. Food and trinkets glowed in the corners of Billie’s eyes, and the bone charm shone like a beacon on the kitchen table.

She frowned. Not _on_ —just between the lip of the table and the chair. Her eyes didn’t want to focus on the glow. She peered closer and narrowed one, head throbbing, but before she could manage to make sense of it her magic ran out and she snapped back to her body.

The door shut behind her with a soft creak; she ignored the front room and ducked into the kitchen. There was nothing, no bone charm, no people. So why did she feel eyes on her?

Her magic was still too weak to try foresight again, so she went with regular sight instead; she swept through the cluttered junk on the table, old dishes and ancient newspapers.

Right by her ear Billie heard a sharp intake of breath and the _woosh_ of something swinging through the air, someone who _hadn’t been there_ a second ago—Billie’s arm came up, stopped the blow before it could connect with her head. But what the fuck had almost hit her? What was she even _holding_? Her thoughts felt scattered, like her brain was a puddle someone had stepped in. She scowled and the space behind her void eye throbbed.

Her hand was curled around a wrist. On one side of that wrist was a hand and in the hand was a heavy ceramic plate. Not the most inspired choice of weapon, but better for Billie than a gun. And the other side of the wrist was attached to an arm. Billie made herself follow the arm with her eyes until it connected with the rest of a person—up to the person’s face—her head throbbed with the effort, thinking about that much, and every nerve screamed at her to look away.

A mass of curly, graying brown hair over a serious face with a hawkish nose and a pursed mouth, wide panicked eyes. Not a face Billie was familiar with, but— “Captain Harcourt?” she tried. Harcourt’s chair squealed against the tile as she threw herself back, but Billie held on; if the woman ran off now she didn’t know she’d be able to find her again. “I’m not working for Burrows, if that’s what you’re worried about,” she tried.

It would have been better if no one had seen her at all, but who knew if anyone else would have even been able to find her?

For a second Billie could have sworn she heard something, but it didn’t stick around long enough for her to make sense of it. She pressed on. “You took the _Kaffa_ to Pandyssia and came back with the rat plague. He didn’t tell you why he wanted the rats released in the city, right? Hard to believe it was for anything good, but you weren’t going to ask _him_ questions. When did you realize he was cleaning up his tracks?”

Harcourt came back into view again, this time fidgeting with her handkerchief. Right, Billie remembered this bone charm; as long as you stayed still, you were invisible. Delilah’s witches had had fun with that one. “You’re a witch. If you aren’t here for the spymaster, why are you here?” Harcourt asked. Something in her voice reminded Billie of the few schoolteachers she’d met; not just demanding but faintly scolding.

“Because I want to bring him down. Not everyone in Dunwall Tower is too fond of Hiram, you know,” she said, trying to inject a note of condescension. Like she was too high up to even think of explaining more. Billie let go of her arm and leaned against the table. “We know he caused the rat plague, but we need to prove it. The rest of your crew is dead, Captain. If you’re willing to testify, the threat to you goes away. No more need to play with bone charms.”

Harcourt’s eyes narrowed. “And if I’m not?”

“Well, at least you won’t have any trouble hiding.” Billie shrugged and then realized it sounded like a threat. Habit. She frowned and then tried to look unconcerned. “But if you could tell everyone what he’s done, you won’t have to worry about that. And we’ll be able to protect your family.”

Corvo wouldn’t complain about that, would he? Thankfully Harcourt didn’t seem to have much of it.

Harcourt paused in her fidgeting and dropped back out of view as she considered. Just as Billie was starting to wonder whether Harcourt was giving up, she sighed and said, “Wait here.”

* * *

By the time she finished talking to Harcourt and turned her over to Corvo’s custody, the sun had gone down again. Billie was humming as she dropped back through the window of her apartment, the familiar contentment of a job well done. And she hadn’t even had to worry about her conscience this time. The thing had been getting annoying.

Billie shut the window behind her, looked around, and froze. The hum died in her throat. An audiograph was lying on her bed.

She frowned at the card; there was nothing written on it, nothing identifying. The material looked like the kind Daud used but most audiographs used the same brand of cardstock. Billie scouted out around her apartment, just in case this was some elaborate trap, but no one seemed to be lying in wait. At a loss for anything else to do, she placed it in the old machine, turned the volume way down, and hit play.

For a few seconds she heard nothing but soft static in the tinny speakers. She turned up the volume a little more and finally heard a voice, too soft, like it had been far enough away from the microphone.

“—refuse a contract like this. Though I suppose anyone might be…nervous, shall we say, about killing an empress.”

Billie stared at the machine. _Burrows_? She turned the volume knob to make sure; there was no mistaking the voice that followed.

“Nervous? Hardly,” Daud said, and Billie sat right down on the floor. “But I had to consider the consequences for my people.” The ruefulness in his voice was real enough. No one would feel safe getting the whalers to do their dirty work for a long time.

“Of course, of course.” Burrows sighed. “I understand you perfectly. Unfortunately I think this _is_ the best solution for the people of Dunwall—”

“Sure,” Daud said, and Billie snorted; she could perfectly imagine the expression that went with that tone, irritation mixed with a stubborn desire to tough it out. They fell into a discussion of terms and timelines, all things that Billie was familiar with, enough to make sure Burrows was really serious about this.

He was going to die _._ And Billie wouldn’t even have to sneak into Coldridge and do it herself.

After a few minutes they wrapped it up—Daud and Burrows had worked together several times before, after all, knew how the other work.

“I trust you know that if you back out of this again, I will be…displeased,” Burrows said.

“I’m sure.” Billie snorted. She could hear the eye-roll in that too. “No need to worry about that. This is something worth doing.”

“…Quite.”

There was a long pause in which Billie could make out nothing but static and the soft _click_ of something that might have been a door. Then Daud’s voice, almost as quiet: “Turn it off.” And the recording shut off with a click.

Billie shared down at the floor between her crossed legs. “When I find that old man,” she muttered, and shook her head. She wanted to go find him and pin him to a wall somewhere. But he would just fuss at her for not doing her job first. When this went to court, everyone would know his voice, everyone would know he had deliberately set up a client for treason. He couldn’t have quit more efficiently if he tried.

* * *

All told, the trial didn’t take long. Dunwall’s court system moved slowly, but not for the empress or for a disgraced royal spymaster. Hiram Burrows was executed; Campbell’s trial was still ongoing when Jessamine asked Billie to meet with her again, but it was looking like he’d be sentenced to life in prison. He had already been stripped of his titles. Some of the Overseers were working themselves into a frenzy over finding Daud, but they had their own messes to clean up, and Jessamine wasn’t going to help them.

“Well,” said Billie, slouching against one of her chair’s arms and slinging her legs over the other, “it’s been a pleasure working with you, Your Majesty.”

So she sounded a little smug. She felt more than a little smug, so really this was restrained. Jessamine had a platter of little sandwiches on her desk; Billie yanked one off the top and saluted her with it. Behind the empress, Corvo made a pained expression.

The empress, meanwhile, had worn a small worrisome frown since Billie had walked in. Besides looking up briefly when Billie entered the room, her eyes had remained focused somewhere in the middle of her desktop. It was altogether enough to make Billie scout out for any listeners or Holger devices on standby, but they seemed to be alone. “Here is your payment, as agreed,” Jessamine said, and handed over a pouch that clinked with coins. Billie had to work to grab it without falling from her chair, but she managed. “However…if you are interested, I can offer you ongoing employment.”

Billie frowned. “How ongoing? And why?”

Jessamine stood and walked to the window. Her hands were pressed tightly together; were she anyone else, she would probably be wringing them. “You did well with Hiram. But I know he is hardly the only corrupt official in the empire—or in Dunwall, for that matter.” Jessamine took a deep breath. “They need to be weeded out. And for that, I need information. It’s more than enough work to keep you busy for as long as you want it.”

Billie froze. There was an iron edge to Jessamine’s voice that invoked her half-sister. Billie’s eyes flickered to Corvo but he’d gone blank again. Of course, he wouldn’t be frightened of an empress. “No offense, Your Majesty,” she said, flat, “but I’m not interested in shoring up a dictatorship.”

Surprise flickered across Jessamine’s face. She clenched her hands once more and then made herself relax. “Ah. I can see how—that isn’t what I mean.” She and Corvo exchanged glances.

_He_ was much easier to read. “I’ll go watch the door,” he said after a moment, clearly not wanting to. Billie marked him just to make sure he wasn’t really going for a squad, but he took up his post and stayed there.

“What I’m about to say can’t leave this room,” Jessamine said. For a moment Billie felt like one of the specimens under Anton’s microscope; she had the same air of intense calculation about her. She nodded. “I will be, I hope, the last Empress of the Isles.”

Billie blinked. That wasn’t at all what she had expected. “You…want to dissolve the empire?” If there was another meaning she couldn’t think of it. Billie only ever paid attention to politics enough to hate politicians and, in this time at least, figure out who she was supposed to kill.

Jessamine shook her head a fraction, paused, and then shook her head again. “No. I mean, when I die—or step down—one person will no longer rule over the empire. I’ve dealt with assassinations all my life. But this…” She leaned back against the windows, turning her head just enough to see over the rooftops. “No country should rest on one person’s life. I believe I’ve done well enough as empress, but if Hiram had killed me he could have undone my life’s work within months, as my father undid the work of his regent. I plan to end the monarchy, Billie. Let the parliament—or something like it—rule.”

“Parliament?” Billie snapped, frowning. _Those_ greedy bastards, all of them lords, none of them with the faintest idea of wait it actually meant to live in the city.

The empress smiled ruefully. “You see why I need you. As parliament is now, I can’t leave my country in its hands. But I have—I hope—decades to sort it out.”

She was out of her mind, Billie thought. But she liked the sound of it, the way she liked Aramis’s suggestion for a ruling council of Serkonos in the future Emily had helped create. “I’m interested,” she said, and bit her lip. “But right now, there’s some business I need to take care of.”

* * *

The old chamber of commerce was deserted. No signs of a fight or force; the whalers had just abandoned it, the way they abandoned all their hideouts once they got too popular or noticeable. But this time, Billie suspected, it was different. No one besides Daud had reached out to her after she quit, but she still heard the rumors. Thomas had reportedly started his own gang out of the mess Daud had left behind. As for Daud himself—he’d retired, apparently.

Billie didn’t worry too much about finding him. She knew this time’s Dunwall and this time’s Daud. (Well, mostly. He kept surprising her recently. A lot of people did, not least herself.) Instead of following his trail, she started keeping an eye on the right haunts.

It took her three days to run into him at an old black-market shop. She was buying a whalebone rune when his head poked up through the open attic door. Billie looked at him and put a few more coins down on the counter. “And two bottles of Gristol cider,” she added; the shopkeep obliged. She passed one bottle (he hated beer) to Daud along with the rune. “You need anything else?”

“No, that’s all I was here for,” he said, tucking the rune into his coat as they headed back down to Dunwall’s streets. It was getting to be winter; a few sad attempts at snowflakes landed on Billie’s collar and faded onto the icy slush of the sidewalk.

For a few minutes they walked in silence. She could feel his eyes on her, though, so after a moment she said, “Thank you. I know sending that audiograph wasn’t easy.”

Daud shrugged, but Billie had the feeling there was more incoming. The street was just crowded enough that no one was paying them any attention as long as they kept their voices low, and Daud always got weirdly introspective when he walked. “I don’t want to become the man you talked about in your future,” he said finally. “You went and found me, after fifteen years, and I just left you to clean up the mess I made.”

Billie frowned. “That’s not what—”

“Really? Because that’s what it sounded like. The only legacy I left you is a future so awful you _went back in time._ ” He grit his teeth. “If that’s where my choices got us, then maybe I should stop making them for other people for a while.”

Years in Daud’s company and she never seen him this angry with _himself_ before. Billie didn’t quite know how to argue with that.

Well. Old bastard probably wouldn’t hold back for long.

“How do you feel about a trip?” Billie asked after a stretch of silence.

“To where?”

“Serkonos.” A snowflake drifted past her eye. Billie caught it on one gloved fingertip. “You won’t like the reason why.”

The corner of his mouth twitched up. “Well, that’s nothing new.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well! here it is! 
> 
> one more (short) scene as a sort of epilogue, and then we're done. apologies for the delay. I knew exactly what I wanted to write, but just couldn't make myself write it.
> 
> comments & kudos are, as always, very welcome.


	6. Epilogue

The mark on the back of Daud’s hand was still an angry, burned red, the same as it had been since Billie and the Outsider had stumbled out of the void a few days before. It would scar. He wasn’t sure if he liked that or not.

Until the Outsider’s magic was gone, Daud hadn’t realized just how much it had done for him. Without the mark, he felt _old;_ his responses were slower, and everything seemed to take more energy than it had before. As if he was perpetually missing a night of sleep. Annoying that so much of what he thought was skill was a side effect of his magic. He would adjust, in time; Daud had been a threat before he ever got the mark.

And he managed to get out of bed without waking Billie, so he hadn’t lost everything.

Morning was just dawning over the waves, early enough that he saw no one else as he crossed the ship to the aft deck. Billie had booked the three of them rooms on an actual passenger ship. She claimed it was because the Outsider should get used to interacting with others as a human, and maybe that was part of it, but Daud thought she was also eager to spend the empress’s money.

To his surprise, the aft deck was already occupied. The Outsider leaned against the rail, staring out into the churning water left in the ship’s wake.

(When they had asked his name for the manifest, everyone had waited a bit too long to give an alias. The Outsider had seemed competent enough as they made their way back to Karnaca; they had assumed he would think of this too. But he hadn’t, so Daud blurted out, “Mark.”

“Marcus Stilton,” Billie had finished, and the first mate had waved them on.

Once they were safely on board, the Outsider had muttered, “ _Mark_?”

Funny; Daud had never seen him look so openly offended. Without the odd eyes he could be any one of the pissed-off teenagers who had worked for Daud over the years. “Would you prefer to be arrested for heresy? We can’t keep calling you the Outsider.”

“That name has served me for millennia. It will continue to serve for the few decades I have left.” The Outsider had frowned. “When next I need one, something less…on-the-nose will serve as an alias.”

Fair enough. He couldn’t imagine calling the Outsider anything else, anyway.

“Stilton?” Daud had asked Billie. It was a common enough surname in Karnaca and Morley, but he remembered it from her accounting of the past, too.

“First surname I thought of.” She had given him a wry grin. “Well, after Kaldwin.”)

“The leviathans have gone silent,” the Outsider said, and frowned. “For me, at least.”

Daud looked into the water, but there was no sign of the whales. If they were nearby, they were far beneath the water’s surface. “Did you expect to hear them?” He couldn’t keep the condescension out of his voice. Ages he’d spent watching humanity—he knew they weren’t hearing whalesong every minute, no matter what the Void was like.

The Outsider picked up on his tone, though, and shot Daud a sour look. It would barely register as an expression on anyone else’s face, but he was used to the Outsider staying carefully blank. “No.” He turned something over in his hands: a simple, two-pronged bone charm. It was old, the carvings worn down and metal cap crooked. Where had he gotten that? Daud made a note to tell Billie to check her things. “The void must adjust to my absence. Perhaps, in time, I will be able to hear them again.”

Great. He couldn’t _wait_ to see what a human Outsider with magic could do.

(As Billie had predicted, he hadn’t been eager to turn him human in the first place.

“This isn’t just because of my tender bleeding heart, Daud. What if he gets bored and marks—” she’d made a vague, frustrated gesture— “the high overseer?”

“Why would he do that?” Unpredictable as the Outsider could be, Daud doubted he’d stoop to that.

She’d shot him a narrow look. “You know what I mean. Why does he do anything? The longer he stays the Outsider, the longer he has to mess with us.”

The selfishness had reassured him. _There_ was the Billie he knew.)

“What do you mean, adjust?” Daud asked after a moment, when it became clear the Outsider wasn’t going to continue without a prompt. He was doing this on purpose, wasn’t he? At least now he couldn’t just fade away whenever he didn’t feel like answering questions.

“I kept the void separate from this world. But it was through me that humanity was able to use the void—with the mark, and in other ways as well.” His thumbnail traced along the bone charm’s faded carving. “I imagine all magic will be gone for a time. Or at least inaccessible.”

The Abbey was going to love that. He wondered if they’d already noticed the difference. “And then?”

The Outsider shrugged, an exaggerated gesture. “Who knows? It will return, certainly. Perhaps the void will choose another avatar, as it did me and the god before me. Perhaps it will consume us all.”

He was—well, he _looked_ serious. And entirely too cheerful about the possibility. _Great._ There had to be a way to know for sure, didn’t there? They couldn’t kill another kid to take the Outsider’s place, but—

“Don’t worry,” the Outsider said, and attempted a smile. His face had the stretched quality of a teenager’s, like his skin wasn’t big enough for his bones. “There had been no avatar for centuries before the Eyeless found me.”

The door creaked open behind them. “At least wait until after he’s awake to start that, kid,” Billie said. She stepped up to the railing between them, squeezing Daud’s arm as she passed. Her void eye was covered in bandages, something she complained about every time she got the chance, but at least the eye and arm both _worked._ Daud had been worried they’d just fall out whenever they turned the Outsider human, but they’d only lost their extra abilities.

Daud snorted at the nickname, and at how quickly the Outsider’s smile vanished when he heard it.

“What?” Billie asked, and shot him a grin before she turned back to the Outsider. “Any plans after we dock tomorrow?”

Oh, no. He knew that leading tone.

“Of a sort. Unless you have a better offer.” The Outsider sounded bored, as if he very much doubted it.

Billie shrugged. “Maybe not better. But you know what the empress is planning, right?” The Outsider nodded. Daud wished he had something with caffeine. Billie still hadn’t told him exactly why the empress had hired her, said it was a state secret. Eventually Daud would be able to wear her down, though. “And you know more than anyone about what goes on in the empire. If you work with us…”

He’d known this was coming, but he still didn’t like it. Of course the Outsider would be a good source of information. Daud would still be happy to never hear from the bastard again.

Thankfully he did not have to voice this. “Perhaps someday. For now…I was born and died in the same city. There is much of the empire I would like to experience for myself.”

Daud tried not to show his relief. Or his curiosity at what exactly the Outsider planned to do. Somehow he was hard to picture as a tourist. “Is there anything useful you can tell us, then?”

He stared out at the waves and finally said, “Watch out for Delilah.”

Billie blinked and stilled. Daud knew what happened with Delilah in the future, more or less, but it was still strange to see Billie so obviously afraid of someone. “Does she know about you? Is she planning anything?”

“Who knows?” The Outsider shrugged with an exaggerated sweep of his arms. Billie rolled her eyes. “If anyone could take advantage of my absence, it would be her. Now _that_ would be interesting.”

“One word for it,” Billie muttered, and shot Daud an annoyed look, which he returned.

Satisfied with his performance, the Outsider said in his usual affected tone, “The rest you will discover yourself.”

What had they expected from him, really? To spill all his secrets now that he was human? Of course the bastard would never make it that easy. Billie leaned against Daud’s shoulder. This sort of thing didn’t come naturally to him and probably never would, but he wanted to put his arm around her, so he did. “Should be fun,” she said, and grinned out at the sea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you've stuck around this far, thank you so much! it's been a lot of fun. not sure if I 100% like it, but you know what, it's the longest thing I've ever written and it didn't turn out half-bad imo.
> 
> historical note: the _Kaffa,_ the name I chose for the ship that brought the rat plague to Dunwall, was named after a city in Crimea that was instrumental in spreading the Black Death to Europe.  
> writing note: if you aren't careful writing the Outsider he starts sounding like Sheldon Goddamn Cooper. or maybe that's just me.
> 
> if you wanna talk about old married assassins hmu on tumblr or pillowfort @coraxes or on twitter @annuxgen.


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